


a path lit home by more than oath and duty

by mollivanders



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Caretaking, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Sharing a Bed, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 03:56:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13286481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: “Where am I?” she mumbles, trying to sit up and failing. Her mouth feltawful– it had probably been a while since she’d used the ‘fresher, and the thought triggers a nausea that sends the room into a loose spin. She clutches her stomach and shuts her eyes, forcing herself into focus. “What areyoudoing here?”K-2 gives a loud sigh that she is absolutely sure he had added to his programming specifically for her benefit. “Jyn Erso,” he says, “you are required to take your medicine. The 2-1B unit which released you to me did so only under the condition that I ensured you took your medicine on schedule.”She cracks her eyes open again, scrambling for memories. “I was in the medbay?”K-2 sniffs with irritation – though this time not at her but at some past event. “You were in quarantine.” He pauses and then extends a long arm towards her with the medicine. “You are required to take your medicine, Jyn Erso,” he says, adding with an almost earnest note, “Cassian made me promise.”





	a path lit home by more than oath and duty

**Author's Note:**

> Written for crazy-fruit for the Holiday Gift Fic giveaway. This was a little more angsty than I expected but I hope you enjoy it!

“Jyn Erso, you are required to take your medicine.” The sound of K-2’s voice echoes loudly in Jyn’s head and she slowly comes awake, squinting in the dim lights of private quarters that are not her own.

“Where am I?” she mumbles, trying to sit up and failing. Her mouth felt _awful_ – it had probably been a while since she’d used the ‘fresher, and the thought triggers a nausea that sends the room into a loose spin. She clutches her stomach and shuts her eyes, forcing herself into focus. “What are _you_ doing here?”

K-2 gives a loud sigh that she is absolutely sure he had added to his programming specifically for her benefit. “Jyn Erso,” he says, “you are required to take your medicine. The 2-1B unit which released you to me did so only under the condition that I ensured you took your medicine on schedule.”

She cracks her eyes open again, scrambling for memories. “I was in the medbay?”

K-2 sniffs with irritation – though this time not at her but at some past event. “You were in quarantine.” He pauses and then extends a long arm towards her with the medicine. “You are required to take your medicine, Jyn Erso,” he says, adding with an almost earnest note, “Cassian made me promise.”

The last admission is calculated and she knows it, but it works. Nobody knows how to play Jyn and Cassian off each other better than K-2 does; fortunately, he only seems interested in using his powers for good. She takes the medicine tentatively, peering at the murky contents.

“Down the hatch,” K-2 says, and she tosses it back, barely tasting the mixture. The 2-1B units which processed most medicinal cocktails on site didn’t add anything to cover the taste, but actually having real medical tech for medicine instead of some patchwork local remedy went a long way to avoiding a taste at all.

“Quarantine?” she asks, instead of the real questions she wants to ask.

_Cassian made you promise? Where is he?_

K-2’s reveal about Cassian had put her location in context, at least. She was in Cassian’s quarters. They were sparser than usual or she might have recognized them. There were the odd nights where she’d taken up his offer to use them while he was gone, and the off nights where she’d crashed in his bed when she was too tired to face the long way back to general quarters in the face of Cassian’s offer.

And there were the other nights, in between.

She’d know them better but for how little time they had together at all.

(She knows them well enough, for all that.)

“You were in quarantine after your last mission,” K-2 says, arms hanging at his sides. It’s his natural pose, and yet somehow in the moment he looks as if he feels as useless as she does. “You contracted a local illness from the planet you were on and were immediately admitted to the medbay.”

Oh yeah. _That_ planet. It had been a living hellscape, the atmosphere so contaminated she could see the air, and the outdated masks the Rebel Alliance had equipped the ship with hadn’t _quite_ filtered out everything.

“Cassian was worried,” K-2 continues, ignoring her reverie, “though I assured him there was a seventy-two point three chance of your recovery.” He pauses before adding in what sounds like an attempt at being reassuring, “those are good odds with your history, Jyn Erso.”

She nods, letting it pass. He’s not wrong.

“Where is he now?” she finally dares to ask, ignoring the ache that still throbs in her chest. The med droids wouldn’t have let her leave quarantine if she was still contagious, and she guesses that Cassian’s quarters, however sparse, are leagues more comfortable than the medbay. She has no memory of it. “Why aren’t you with him?”

K-2’s shoulders slump and she knows the answer before he says it. She’d worried the truth out of them both.

“His mission is classified, Jyn,” K-2 says, and his head tilts up to look her squarely in the eye. “It is a solo mission.”

He doesn’t share the odds of Cassian’s return, and she is grateful.

“He made me promise,” K-2 adds and she can _feel_ the loneliness coming off the droid. She doubts he’s ever been separated from Cassian before. “He said to move you to his quarters and look after you.”

Her mouth is dry and her mind dregs up a hazy memory of the medbay, bright lights, and Cassian standing outside her quarantine containment field.

“Will you stay?” she asks instead, trying not to dwell. He probably would anyway, but just now, with this news, she didn’t want to be alone. The medicine K-2 gave her was making her drowsy and around the knot in her stomach and the headache she got from some unremembered conflict, she knows she’s not going to be able to stay awake much longer.

(She doesn’t hear K-2’s answer, but she knows it anyway.)

+

She dreams.

She dreams of when she was a child, of the last Solstice Celebration they’d had on Coruscant. She dreams of fireworks and her mother coming home late; her father pacing with worry in the hallway. She dreams of Lyra returning at last, a flurry of dark robes and hidden gazes, and suddenly Cassian is standing over her in the medbay.

“Promise me,” she hears him say to K-2. She can’t tell if it’s a dream or a memory or both but he steps back, washing out in the distortion from the containment shield, and she reaches out to stop him. Her arms won’t move, her body sluggish and leaden around her, but his voice is amplified in her head.

“Take care of her,” he says. His voice isn’t angry; he doesn’t yell at K-2. He’s not even raising his voice. _He wouldn’t_ , she thinks blearily, _not now_ , and he steps closer. She tries to drink him in but her focus slips and she’s drowning, falling back into a cascade of fireworks and her mother tucking her into bed, a desperate oath sworn over her in sleep.

_Promise me._

She echoes it back to him, a thread in the dark, a line thrown out in a child’s hope for assurance.

(He doesn’t answer.)

+

She wakes when K-2 rouses her, and sleeps with the medicine he gives her. They do not discuss Cassian, and she doesn’t ask any more questions. They have an easy acquaintance between them now – though neither of them are prone to familiarity, Cassian is a cipher between them. He trusts them; they trust each other.

(She counts the days in her head, and marks the days on a corner by the bed – days of recovery; days of waiting.

Days of a promise fulfilled.)

“Your condition is improved, Jyn,” K-2 informs her on day eight and she nods, stepping out of bed with shaky feet. “I estimate there is only a three point one percent chance of a relapse at this time.” He pauses and she watches him unquestioningly. “Those are _very_ good odds with your history.”

She almost smiles.

“Any news?” she asks, pulling herself up by the bedside stand. “Am I back on the active duty roster again?”

Something in K-2’s silence catches her off guard.

“Lieutenant Rook came by again,” he says and she flashes with disappointment at sleeping through Bodhi’s visit. “And General Rieekan asked for an update yesterday.” Then, as if he has done her a great favor, K-2 says “I told him you were still recovering.”

No other news.

She nods in appreciation. “Thanks. I should probably report back soon though.” She takes a wobbly step towards the ‘fresher and grimaces, taking it more slowly. “Tomorrow.” She takes a shaky breath, considering. “I could move back to general quarters,” she offers. “You don’t have to look after me any more if you have something to do.”

K-2 stares at her wordlessly for a long minute and then –

“I will order more meal packets,” he says, and lopes out the door without further comment. The blast of cold air from the main base hits her like an icy wave and she falls against the wall, catching her breath in a violent coughing fit, her hand slipping for support. Three point something chance, but still a hell of a recovery. Maybe tomorrow, she’d be okay. _Better_ , at least. Maybe tomorrow –

_Promise me._

She shuts her eyes and makes herself stand upright again.

_Promise._

+

The lights are dim when she wakes, near their lowest setting. K-2 is powered down in the corner of the room, recharging, and her eyes struggle to adjust to the light.

Someone is at her bedside.

She startles fully awake, old instincts fighting the side effects of the medicine, before unconscious recognition hits her body. She knows him; she knows the way he moves, the way he smells, the way his bootsteps fall in time. She’d know him anywhere, and in any life.

“Cassian,” she whispers with hoarse relief, the terror of her dreams falling away. Fireworks and desperate calls in the night fade away against the solid outline of his frame. Their hands find each other in the dark and wordlessly, their fingers weave together in a familiar clasp. “You came back,” she says, trying to sit up before he shakes his head to stop her. His movements are slow and worry clasps at her heart. “You’re injured,” she says, sitting up again in protest and gripping his shoulders.

“You’re better,” he says, drinking her in, and an ache of longing twists inside her. She _missed_ him, in her dreams and across a hundred million kilometers.

“Cassian,” she says, her voice still a whisper, “you’re injured.”

He shrugs, and winces. “Droids already patched me up. I’m just sore.” He takes a shaky breath and she listens, deciphering the wounds on his body by the tell of his lungs, his heartbeat, his movements. “I wanted to see you.”

She frowns, wanting answers, but it’s all she can do to sit upright.

“You’re here,” she confirms, and he nods. She moves her hands, cupping his face, and his eyes slide shut at the touch. “I’m here,” he says, and leans down to rest his forehead against hers. Exhaustion pulls at his frame and she can feel his body hasn’t slept in days. It’s like she’s been resting for the both of them, and she’s not sure how he made it home.

It doesn’t matter. He did.

“If I wake up to you bleeding,” she warns “I’m dragging you back to the medbay myself.” She jerks a thumb over at K-2. “He’ll help.” Cassian’s mouth quirks as he looks at her, and nods in agreement. “Promise,” she says, and he takes a shaky breath, his eyes wandering over her face.

“I promise,” he says, and when he wraps his arms around her, a hesitant recovery connecting their lips, she believes him.

(She shuts her eyes and holds him closer, gentler, as their breaths stutter happily between their bodies.)

Quietly, she helps him pull off his jacket. There _are_ bloodstains on it but it’s hard to tell if they’re new, and when she helps him tug off his shirt she spots the bacta patches over the left side of his abdomen and above his heart. At least, she thinks, the med droids wouldn’t let him go if he was worse off. He watches her eyes, taking note of her study, and she holds back her breath in frustrated hope.

He’s home, alive under her hands. She can’t ask for more.

(She’ll demand it.)

Gingerly, they curl up together, cautioning against their wounds shared and separate, and slowly, by the count of stolen breaths, she hears him fall asleep. She feels his heartbeat under her hand, steady and true, and rests her head against his chest to listen.

 _“Promise me,”_ he’d told K-2; an oath, a transfer of duty, a last request to watch over those left behind. _“Promise me,”_ he’d said, and K-2 had kept followed through. It was like Cassian had never left; had never expected to come back.

Somehow, he’d come back.

( _Promise me._ )

It’s an oath; a duty; and so much more than she can put in words; a protection she has never known.

In the dark of his quarters, she watches over him in the night.

_Finis_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladytharen](http://ladytharen.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr :)


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